About books, reading, the power of fiction, some music, some movies. These are my opinions, my thoughts, my views. There is much wisdom afloat in the world and I like finding it in books. Communicating about wisdom found keeps it from getting lost.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

SHYLOCK IS MY NAME

Summary from Goodreads: Winter, a cemetery,
Shylock. In this provocative and profound interpretation of “The
Merchant of Venice,” Shylock is juxtaposed against his present-day
counterpart in the character of art dealer and conflicted father Simon
Strulovitch. With characteristic irony, Jacobson presents Shylock as a
man of incisive wit and passion, concerned still with questions of
identity, parenthood, anti-Semitism and revenge. While Strulovich
struggles to reconcile himself to his daughter Beatrice's “betrayal” of
her family and heritage – as she is carried away by the excitement of
Manchester high society, and into the arms of a footballer notorious for
giving a Nazi salute on the field – Shylock alternates grief for his
beloved wife with rage against his own daughter's rejection of her
Jewish upbringing. Culminating in a shocking twist on Shylock’s demand
for the infamous pound of flesh, Jacobson’s insightful retelling
examines contemporary, acutely relevant questions of Jewish identity
while maintaining a poignant sympathy for its characters and a genuine
spiritual kinship with its antecedent—a drama which Jacobson himself
considers to be “the most troubling of Shakespeare’s plays for anyone,
but, for an English novelist who happens to be Jewish, also the most
challenging.”

My Review:

Why would anyone living today want to read Shakespeare?
Thanks to Hogarth Press and their ShakespeareProject, I am finding out. I am only two books in, but
reading the retellings after reading the plays is becoming an eye-opener for
me. I have been told he is revered and still famous because he captured the
timeless conundrums of human existence. I have come to find out that is true. I
realize that sounds lofty but seriously, The Gap of Time based on The Winter’s Tale covered the pitfalls of jealousy. Shylock
Is My Name, a retelling of The
Merchant of Venice, features revenge,
anti-Semitism, and cultural trickery.

While doing my reviewer research, I found two conflicts
among critics of The Merchant of Venice
over the years: was Shakespeare actually an anti-Semite or just portraying the
commonly held views of his era and is Shylock a sympathetic character or just a
cliché? Of course, choosing Howard Jacobson for the retelling was a pretty sure
bet as to how those conflicts would be resolved.

Some years ago, I reviewed Jacobson’s Booker Prize winning The
Finkler Question. I was delighted to be
introduced to his wit, his fascinating characters, and his insouciant look into
the human condition. Shylock Is My Name is unrelentingly literary but I honestly did not mind having to stop
every few pages and look up a word I’d never come across before. Nor did I mind
a feeling of wading through paragraph after paragraph of intellectualism. On
the contrary, I felt his respect for the reader and became imbedded in the
lives of these modern characters.

A wealthy Jewish father living in the midst of London’s
Golden Triangle, worried near to death about his precocious teenage daughter
and her choice of boyfriends. The daughter whose sheer audacity is underscored
by her love for that father. Plurabell, a character defined by social media and
too much money, who perfectly embodies Portia’s famous double cross. The effete
art dealer, always sad, never decisive, and nemesis to the Jewish father.

Best of all is Shylock. Shylock is my name, he says. He
appears in a graveyard almost like a member of the undead and hangs around that
Jewish father like an Old Testament prophet, giving cryptic advice and calling
the modern Jew on his bullshit. Shylock rules over the novel as he laments his
losses and still rages against the oblivious discrimination and cruelty of the
Gentiles. While we hapless readers are being led by the nose through Jacobson’s
cryptic plot, he sees it coming. He has been there.

When I was 13 years old, a newly confirmed Christian, I had
a church-school teacher who was a converted Jew. I spent a year of Sunday
mornings with a group of bored teenagers studying comparative religion. He even
took us to all the church services of the other denominations and faiths in our
community. One of my best friends, also named Judy, was a fairly devout Jew who
loved Christmas carols, Christmas dinner and Christmas cookies. I got to sit
next to her when we visited the Synagogue at Passover. We ate the foods
together and prayed the prayers and she was impressed by my comprehension of
all that was going on, even though I had some issues with the food. I could
never quite understand anti-Semitism after that. It just made me sad. Why would
I ever want everyone I know to be just like me?

Shylock Is My Name is
humorous, witty, even sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. Ultimately though, it is
deeply sad. I suppose human beings love to bully. We are taught to deal with
bullying in various ways depending on our race, gender, or religion. It still
sucks. There have been many great Jewish apologists among writers over the
centuries, but Howard Jacobson is one of the best. Like the sad clown who makes
us laugh with him over his pratfalls, he makes us feel what it is like to be a
Jew. He doesn’t forgive but he gets it. He also does not spare the mean
spirited or provide comfort.

If you want to know the plot of this novel, you are not
going to read it here. It is however brilliantly faithful to Shakespeare and at
the same time a rebuttal. Just to tempt you, watch for the part where Shylock
delivers Portia’s The Quality of Mercy speech. Be prepared to grin through your
tears.

11 comments:

This is an interesting project. I've been reading quite a bit about these books that reimagine and retell Shakespeare. I actually enjoy Shakespeare in the original, so I think it will be fascinating to compare. The Finkler Question was a marvelous read and I can believe that Jacobson could really go to town on a character like Shylock!

I plan to read the whole series. As I did with The Gap of Time, for this one I read The Merchant of Venice first. I think it is a great project. The next one will be Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler, a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew!!

What a great review, Judy! I have never understood anti-Semitism either, but I understand that the human race has needed escape goats through the ages and they are perfect as targets for being so loyal to their philosophy. The Jews are what one would call a resilient race; that is worthy of praise and admiration.

I first encountered the idea of anti-Semitism in ninth grade when we studied The Merchant of Venice. Until then, I don't think I was even aware that Jews existed (I lived in small town in the 1960s). The biggest "divide" in religion that I had encountered until that time was knowing the Catholic kids in our neighbourhood went to confession, and we Protestant kids didn't.

To this day, I still tend to see the world as homogenmous and the individuals in it as human beings with common traits. (As Shylock said: "if you prick us, do we not bleed?")

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